My Heart is a Chainsaw Review

 Hello Interwebs!

Another book finished and another book review. I think we're up to four posts in a row. I'm killing it for October so far, despite being like a week and a half into October before I managed to get a TBR together. So I've now finished three books in October and just let me say that this might be my favorite book of the year so far. That book is My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. I read it from October 7-13th and gave it a 5 star rating. 

This book is described as being a love story to slasher fiction and on that point it definitely delivered. The book follows our main character Jade who is half-Native and living in the small town of Proofrock, Idaho on Indian Lake. Jade is an outcast and obsessed with slasher films. Then she finds herself in the middle of one. 

This book was a very slow burn horror. You get an initial tease about the slashfest about to happen in the first chapter and then we go to Jade and her life and the extra credit papers she's writing to her history teacher detailing every aspect of thrillers. You learn what she's about, the town and its history and it sets up the main players in the slasher to come: the cop, the teacher, the horror girl, and the final girl. Then people start dying and by the time you hit the main slasher at the end you think you have it figured it out but you still don't see it coming. This book was bleak and gory and exactly what it was supposed to be, a love story to slashers. 

As always spoilers after the cover pic. 

So the book opens with a pair of Dutch exchange students stopping by Indian Lake at night and deciding to go skinny dipping. They end up taking the canoe tied to the dock and getting into trouble on the water. You get flashes of something in the water, something out there in the dark and the cold before both are killed with her cellphone still recording. 

Then we cut to our real story and our "hero" Jade. Jade is an outcast in town with no friends, a father who is neglectful at best, an absent mother, and an obsession with slasher flicks. She leaves her home in the middle of the night after a confrontation with her father and his friend and goes to a construction site and ends up talking to the men before she takes off in the town canoe and slits her wrists. She's saved by the Sheriff and when he drives her back from her stint at the hospital he gives her her things back including a cell phone that's not hers. The cell phone turns out to belong to the dead Dutch girl and the footage of hers and her boyfriend's mysterious death moves Jade to believe that a slasher is just beginning.

Through the middle part of the book you learn the history of Jade's home and Indian Lake, of the slaughter at the summer camp halfway around the lake, nicknamed Camp Blood, and the Lake Witch, a girl who drowned in the lake and then her body was snagged by a boat hook and mutilated. You meet the girl Jade believes will be the final girl, Letha, who is one of the rich families who are building a community on the opposite side of the lake called Terra Nova. 

Then more people die, Letha discovering the body or present for each death. A slaughter of elk in the woods between the town and Terra Nova, the discovery of the body of the Dutch man, the death of the man who was present for the drowning of the Sheriff's daughter back in the day, and the mutilation death of one of the Terra Nova residents at Camp Blood. 

After her beloved history teacher is shot down over the lake, she goes to investigate Terra Nova herself and finds the body of multiple construction workers she'd spoken to at the beginning. She sees the one who was particularly friendly with her get chased down by Letha's father with a nail gun before disappearing into the lake. Letha discovers Jade in one of the houses and takes her to her family's yacht to watch movies and spend the night. In the morning the two girls discover the other people on the boat have been slaughtered and they escape into the lake. After a harrowing trip to Camp Blood, including hiding in a pile of the slaughtered elk they make their way to the town's annual viewing in the lake of Jaws on the 4th and just when you're ready for Letha's father to be the killer you discover it is in fact the Lake Witch herself slaughtering citizens of the town and of Terra Nova alike in the lake before Jade finally ends up killing her in the lake with Letha's assistance before she kills her own father when he comes after her, despite her believing him already dead. She flees the town after being filmed killing her abusive father and discovers the forest on fire where she'd tried to burn the pile of elk carcasses. She ends up breaking into the dam office and trying to open the dam to flood the lake and stop the fire before it gets to town. 

You are left without knowing for sure she succeeded in saving the town, without knowing what her ultimate fate will be, and with a final image of a mama bear protecting her cub from another bear fleeing the fire. 

This book was a ride. It was super slow burn but when shit went down, it went down fast. The scene where Jade kills her father after getting rid of the Lake Witch was almost straight out of the end of Friday the 13th (the original movie). The book is chock full of slasher references, especially to Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween. It was a mix of the supernatural and human and I adored it. In fact, I think with this book Stephen Graham Jones has bypassed Stephen King as my favorite all-time horror author. I immediately bought the hardcover of the book on Amazon (get 3 for the price of 2 right now) and I have plans to read as much of his backlist as I can in the near future. I highly recommend this book and I look forward to reading more of his in the future. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle